ORDA May Gain Belleayre

Benny Profane wrote

Jamesdeluxe wrote

Waiting for Benny to come in and spread bad juju.

Hi.

84 inch base at A Basin this morning. Spring conditions.

Have a nice day!

And here we thought you would just come in and rain on our parade.  Leave it to you to come in an snow on it!

What's AlpineZone?

Face4Me wrote

ScottyJack wrote

I disagree.  I think it will drive downstate skiers to WF/Gore.  If a season pass good for all three brings a couple hundred more visits to WF/Gore that's great.

I'd be really surprised if they would make a combination pass available. That could really affect the number of down-staters and New Jersey skiers who would head up to Gore or Whiteface, especially on "marginal" weekends when weather might be a factor and that kind of thing.

What would be REALLY smart, in my opinion, is if they offered Whiteface and Gore passholders a 50% weekday rate at Belleayre. That might entice people to go to Belleayre for mid-week trips. That way, they'd generate some extra income at Belleayre, while not "hurting" the weekend traffic to Gore and Whiteface. I know if I could do a day trip to Belleayre for $22.50, I'd probably end up going at least 4 or 5 times during the season, maybe even more if conditions are good.

I wonder if they have done any studies to see if they could take regular Belle skiers and redirect them from Vermont to Gore/WF or are there a large amount of Belle skiers who go to Gore/WF. If it is the first case then a combo pass is a benefit for Gore/WF. In the second case you are just reducing revenue. It also might be neither case.

The discounts and free tickets that Belle offers are a huge benefit for skiers. All the screaming and marketing by the other 3 in the Catskills does not change this fact. The undercutting private business may be true, but way more people benefit from this situation then are hurt by it. The taxpayer support point is valid but very difficult to change. It might be possible that NYS gets back what it puts into Belle.

Face4Me - I got the Hunter Big Lift Card and skied midweek a bunch of times for 1/2 price. Early season was $18 and during the season it was $28. This kept me from going for the bargin days at Belle because I think the terrain at Hunter is better for me. With the install of the HSQ on Hunter West it is no contest.

x10003q wrote

Face4Me - I got the Hunter Big Lift Card and skied midweek a bunch of times for 1/2 price. Early season was $18 and during the season it was $28. This kept me from going for the bargin days at Belle because I think the terrain at Hunter is better for me. With the install of the HSQ on Hunter West it is no contest.

That's pretty cool ... I hadn't heard of that. The problem is, for whatever reason, and I know it's just me, so don't anyone go raining down on me ... I really hate the terrain at Hunter. Whenever I ski the Catskills, I usually go to Belleayre or sometimes Windham. Years ago (20+) I used to ski Plattekill occasionally, but I haven't been back there since the '80's. After reading everything on this forum this year about Plattekill, that's one I may have to revisit next season.

But thanks for the info!

ScottyJack wrote

What's AlpineZone?

another ski forum

Face4Me wrote

x10003q wrote

Face4Me - I got the Hunter Big Lift Card and skied midweek a bunch of times for 1/2 price. Early season was $18 and during the season it was $28. This kept me from going for the bargin days at Belle because I think the terrain at Hunter is better for me. With the install of the HSQ on Hunter West it is no contest.

That's pretty cool ... I hadn't heard of that. The problem is, for whatever reason, and I know it's just me, so don't anyone go raining down on me ... I really hate the terrain at Hunter. Whenever I ski the Catskills, I usually go to Belleayre or sometimes Windham. Years ago (20+) I used to ski Plattekill occasionally, but I haven't been back there since the '80's. After reading everything on this forum this year about Plattekill, that's one I may have to revisit next season.

But thanks for the info!

Your welcome.

 I am curious (not argumentative   )- what do you not like about Hunter's terrain? There are some things I do not like about Hunter either but not enough to hit Belle more often.

ausable skier wrote

Do you think NYS is actually going to transfer some of the DEC budget to Orda to run this - NO

and that's that.

CONTENTS DELETED

x10003q wrote

 I am curious (not argumentative   )- what do you not like about Hunter's terrain? There are some things I do not like about Hunter either but not enough to hit Belle more often.

Ok ... Here goes ...

Starting with Hunter West, for the most part, whenever I've been there, the only thing that's open is Claire's Way and Wayout. They're both OK, but Claire's is usually an ice rink on the top from my experience. Wayout is a pretty good trail.

On the main face, there's just not a whole lot of options. If you go over to East Side Drive and/or Minya Konka, those trails are OK, but they're just too short. I've never skied K-27, so can't comment on it.

The times I've skied there, Crossover is usually bumped up very nicely, and I like the double fall line on it, but again, it's awfully short. You can keep Hellgate! The Cliff is OK, has a few fun spots, but they don't last long. I've never skied Jimmy Huega Express, so again, no comment. Belt Parkway is OK, but there's nothing particularly interesting about it. It's got the same feel as The Wilmington Trail at Whiteface, but there's no real comparison between the two. I liked when they added Drop Off years ago, that added an interesting diversion.

Racer's Edge has the nice drops, but again, they're just so short that they're hardly worth mentioning. Same for Eisenhower. I think that pretty much covers most of the mountain, excluding Hunter One which I've never skied.

As for Belleayre, in reality, it suffers from many of the same faults. The runs are fairly short, and they're almost identical to each other, but I guess I just like the way things are more "spread out" there than they are at Hunter. Same for Windham. The main face of those mountains just seems to be wider, allowing for the trails to follow more separate paths, rather than all coming together. I always get the feeling that I'm in a giant funnel when I ski at Hunter.

There's also the "atmosphere" ... I can remember years ago when I was skiing at Hunter, seeing a security guard standing near the lift with a side arm. That's just not the kind of thing I want to see when I'm out for a day in the mountains with my kids. I've never seen Hunter as a "family" mountain ... it's always been more of a twenty-something, let's get hammered and go skiing kind of place in my opinion. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just not for me.

An article from today's Adirondack Daily Enterprise, with some interesting excepts below.

I had never been able to find information on Belleayre's skier visits or profitability:

ORDA may take over Catskill ski resort

By CHRIS KNIGHT - Senior Staff Writer Adirondack Daily Enterprise

...

ORDA board Vice Chairman Serge Lussi said the possibility of the Olympic Authority taking over Belleayre has been talked about for several years. It's come into focus recently, he said, because former ORDA board chairman Joe Martens is now DEC's commissioner.

...

Annual skier visits have averaged 167,000 over the last four years.

....

Should it assume operation of the ski center, ORDA would be running a facility whose operating costs have regularly exceeded revenues, sometimes by more than $1 million, according to budget information provided by DEC. In the winter of 2009-10, the most recent season for which data was available, Belleayre had $6.3 million in operating costs but collected only $5.2 million in revenue.

70s Gore Kid wrote

Doesn't Belleayre still look like a ski area from 1980?  

Have not been there in years, but from postings and photos on HR it really looks behind the times.  I think ORDA could inject some fresh life into it, as it has into Gore the past decade or longer.

Think about it:  under the DEC, Gore had about 25% snowmaking, when everyone across the border in VT had 75% man made coverage.  Lifts:  old, and older.  Slow. And yellow and orange.

ORDA, the development authority everyone in North Creek loves to hate, seems to have done a lot to update Gore. New Gondola, new trails, snowmaking everywhere. Looks good to me.

Under the DEC, Whiteface was Iceface.  Two slow old chairs to the top and top of Little Whiteface. Horrible grooming: I remember ice cookies everywhere. ORDA has brought millions of improvements, a new Gondola, lodge, etc.

The DEC's primary purpose is "environmental conservation," which does not go hand in hand with ski area development and updating. So from this old timer's perspective, an ORDA-run Belleayre would be a good thing.

Plus, people in the Catskills would be also able to complain about Lake Placid getting all the funding.

Nice 20/20 hindsight. You have compressed 28 years of very uneven and neglectful ORDA management into "Gore is ok now" so its all good.

ORDA has been in charge of Gore since 1984 and didn't do any major upgrades until they finally stuck a pipe in the Hudson in the mid 1990s years after permit approval. Anybody on the board remember waiting 20 minutes in liftlines for the Straight Brook Double or the North Double? Those were finally upgraded in the mid 1990s - 10 years after ORDA took over. The Gondola was replaced 10 years too late and almost 10 years after they started to cut the liftline.  The upgrades that have been recently completed were in UMPs from the early 1980s.There is no credit for taking 20 years to fulfill 5 year plans that are 20 years old.  You do not get credit for upgrading snowmaking at Gore or WF because you would be out of business without it. Almost every Eastern ski area has over 90% snowmaking. By the way the chairs on Little Whiteface are still the same old and slow ones you mentioned and there was a evacuation on one last season. The Upper WF chair is also still a fixed grip. Gore has doubled its skier visits since the early 1990s and doubled its terrain yet they still have not added any new bathrooms on the mountain. There was a proposed lodge on Bear but as we all know it does not exist.

There is a $20million convention center in the middle of Lake Placid.

Your comments about Belleayre are amusing. You need to ski there. It is way better than it used to be. It is in great shape for ORDA to milk without having to do much beyond some cosmetic updates.

x10003q wrote

Your comments about Belleayre are amusing. You need to ski there. It is way better than it used to be. It is in great shape for ORDA to milk without having to do much beyond some cosmetic updates.

How do you milk a place that losses a million dollars a year?

I don't want to start a Bell vs Hunter thread..
Over the past 5 years in my opinion Hunter has basically transformed it self into a topnotch ski area. Yes it has it's short comings , but it does it's best with what it has..

Easy.
Raise prices.
Eliminate most of the discounts.
Eliminate all DEC positions and go mostly seasonal. They did a bunch of this last year, but it will go farther this year.
Close chunks of the mountain mid week.
No snowmaking before Dec 1.
No snowmaking after Feb 15.
Charge for close parking.
Cut the marketing budget by 90%.

Does any of this sound familiar?

x10003q wrote

Easy.
Raise prices.
Eliminate most of the discounts.
Eliminate all DEC positions and go mostly seasonal. They did a bunch of this last year, but it will go farther this year.
Close chunks of the mountain mid week.
No snowmaking before Dec 1.
No snowmaking after Feb 15.
Charge for close parking.
Cut the marketing budget by 90%.

Does any of this sound familiar?

OK...but would you consider that ORDA milking Belleayre or trying to get costs under control?

Those types of threads are often entertaining, start off semi-civil, but in the end, it ain't pretty.

Highpeaksdrifter wrote

OK...but would you consider that ORDA milking Belleayre or trying to get costs under control?

Both. Once they ID the problems and find the pricing balance the milking will commence.  Recently Belle seemed to running the snowmaking eqp quite a bit. Maybe they were trying to compete with Hunter. Maybe they will get better electric rates being part of ORDA - but one would hope that the DEC was good about finding competitive rates.

It is not clear were the Belleayre summer programs fit in. There is a lake they run at the bottom of the mountain.

They can always add services. Nothing unfair about more for your $$

BigDogMom wrote

I don’t think there will be any reciprocal passes for ski season 2011/2012 because Gore, WF, and Belleayre have all been selling season passes for this season already.  I don’t think you can add or subtract privileges mid-stream.  I do think a shared pass is possible for ski season 2012/2013 and perhaps as a group we can enlighten ORDA what would be exciting and feasible for a combined season pass.

ausable skier wrote

"It is not in this year's (ORDA) budget, but there is a possibility that ORDA will be operating Bellayre this winter," he said.

Do you think NYS is actually going to transfer some of the DEC budget to Orda to run this - NO

This means Orda will be asked to do more with the same budget.  Orda all ready has too many non profitable assets hung around its neck - This would just be one more.  This is bad for both Gore and WF.

A mid budget transfer would have to be a management agreement with operating $$ coming from DEC. Again, historically, this is how the Gore/ORDA agreement was handled. Also, DEC employees were kept on and later transferred to ORDA while keeping their DEC wage levels (still in effect) so it's likely that the current manager (Lanza?) will be retained.
Again...just referring to how this has been handled historically.

x10003q wrote

Easy.
Raise prices.
Eliminate most of the discounts.
Eliminate all DEC positions and go mostly seasonal. They did a bunch of this last year, but it will go farther this year.
Close chunks of the mountain mid week.
No snowmaking before Dec 1.
No snowmaking after Feb 15.
Charge for close parking.
Cut the marketing budget by 90%.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Hey, I know, I know. How about eliminate an entire blood sucking department/quasi agency from the NY taxpayer teet and just let one bunch of beauracrats run the ski hills instead of two? Welcome to your future, NY skiers, and be happy Cuomo skis. Imagine if he didn't and just chucked the ski hills off to private management, as, well, he maybe should in tough times.